This review by Joshua Kosman was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 7, 2009.
The thing about love, as most people learn sooner or later, is that it stubbornly refuses to be guided by the precepts of logic and rationality. A pretty smile, an enticing gaze, some shapely body part or other, and boom - there goes common sense.
Not so in "Venere, Amore e Ragione" ("Venus, Cupid and Reason"), the comely little musical entertainment presented over the weekend by the early-music ensemble Magnificat. In Alessandro Scarlatti's serenata, probably first performed in Rome in 1706, Cupid throws off his blindfold, Read More...
This review by Joseph Sargent was posted at San Francisco Classical Voice on April 6, 2009.
An unmistakable allure surrounds concerts that bring long-neglected music into the new light of day. Aside from the sheer novelty of presenting repertory otherwise seldom available in concert or on recordings, these efforts can prove highly memorable for the listener, who comes away with a distinct feeling of having experienced something special. Such encounters happen frequently with Warren Stewart’s Baroque ensemble Magnificat, whose penchant for seeking out hidden treasures often yields delightful performances of music by underappreciated composers.
For Magnificat’s latest concert set, the presumptive diamond Read More...
This review by Anna Carol Dudley appeared in the February 10, 2009 edition of San Francisco Classical Voice.Heinrich Schütz suggested that his Musikalische Exequien could be a substitute for a German mass. Warren Stewart has taken him at his word, incorporating the work into a full-length church service. Stewart’s Magnificat, complete with two organs, a continuo group, and eight singers (including a preacher and a deacon), performed the mass Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. The so-called audience served as congregation, joining in on some verses of the chorales.Nowadays, chorales are called hymns, and in American churches Read More...
by Joseph Sargent in the October 7, 2008 issue of San Francisco Classical Voice.
For several years now, the Baroque ensemble Magnificat has made seventeenth-century French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier into something of a cottage industry. A regular fixture on the ensemble’s season calendars, this composer embodies Magnificat’s stated mission of uncovering the “‘new music’ of the early Baroque” — masters of the era who have yet to receive their due. Few composers indeed may fit the description of “hidden treasure” more aptly than Charpentier, who is often upstaged in performances today by Jean-Baptiste Lully but was highly regarded in his lifetime Read More...
This review by Thomas Busse was published in San Francisco Classical Voice on April 15, 2008.
The crack early-music ensemble Magnificat attempted the difficult challenge of performing a Baroque comic opera in concert over the weekend. The form is unlike serious opera or slighter genres such as intermezzos or serenatas, which readily lend themselves to unstaged presentation. Comic opera, with its typically recitative-heavy, slighter music, depends on stage action, comic timing, and the conveyance of complicated and farcical plots, much of which gets lost by singers in dress clothes standing in place.
I am happy to report that Magnificat, under Warren Stewart’s Read More...
In "Revivifying Liturgical Gems", reviewer Scott Edwards, writing for San Francisco Classical Voice, appears to have really enjoyed the experience in spite of his predisposition against liturgical reconstructions. We're glad he enjoyed the concert!
By the way, Classical Voice does a terrific job of covering the Bay Area classical music scene. Many thanks for the service they provide!
By Rebekah Ahrendt
The following review appeared on San Francisco Classical Voice.
The sanctuary of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco was transformed into the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice Sunday afternoon. Performing a re-creation of a vespers service for the Feast of the Annunciation, Magnificat wowed the audience with works by Johann Rosenmüller, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli. This program was a great example of what happens when good colleagues perform the music of good colleagues.
Rosenmüller, Rovetta, and Cavalli all worked together at San Marco beginning in 1658, when Rosenmüller arrived from his native Germany. He had been scheduled Read More...
This review by Joseph Sargent appeared in the San Francisco Classical Voice on September 30, 2005.
Giovan Battista Guarini's play Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd) was a failure as drama but proved extraordinarily successful as literature. The tragicomic 17th-century play of pastoral love, lust and loss was first published in 1590. No other source of lyrical texts surpassed it in popularity among Italian composers of the time.
Il Pastor Fido evidently holds a similar appeal for Magnificat, which compiled a selection of solo and polyphonic pieces from the play for its opening concert of the 2005-2006 season, organized into a narrative Read More...